Do Affiliate Marketers Need a Website and List?

Do You Need a Website to Be an Affiliate Marketer?

As an affiliate marketer, you may wonder if you need to have your own website in order to succeed in the business. While it’s certainly a good idea to have your own website, there are many options that don’t require you to do that.

For example, you can use third party platforms that allow you to promote products. Examples include Zujava, and Hub Pages. These sites are relatively easy to use and can help you make a profit in affiliate marketing.

You can also get hosting for a free blog. For example, BlogSpot allows you to create a free blog where you can promote products.

The one thing you need to be aware of, though, before you use third party platforms – is that you’re subject to their rules.

At any time, the rules may change and your blog might disappear or your pages may become obsolete.

You just don’t have much control over your business when you choose these options.

In fact, you can have the business you’ve worked hard to build that gets deleted in an instant.

The best way to guarantee that you have control over your business is to have your own website.

You can purchase a domain and hosting inexpensively and know that you’ll have control over your own blog.

It’s very simple to set up a blog on your own site and you don’t have to worry about conforming to anyone else’s rules about what can and can’t be done on it.

Then you can use third party platforms as a support mechanism and even to drive traffic to your blog.

These platforms can help supplement what you’re doing while allowing you to have more control over your business.

If the bulk of your income comes from your own website, you won’t have to worry about what happens if the rules change on another site.

You’ll find that it doesn’t cost as much as you might think to have your own site in your chosen niche and truly be the master of your own affiliate marketing business.

This small investment (of about $10 a year for a domain and less than $10 a month in hosting) can bring big payoffs and is worth your efforts.

As an affiliate marketer, you don’t have to have your own website. But depending on third party platforms alone can be a risky decision.

The best option is to have your own website and take advantage of third party platforms to supplement what you’re doing on your own site.

This way you get the best of both worlds and have multiple streams of income to support your affiliate marketing career.

Do Affiliate Marketers Need to Build a List?

When embarking on an affiliate marketing career, you’ll need to determine if you want to build a list of emails from customers.

Whether or not to build a list depends on the type of affiliate marketing you plan to pursue.

If you want to sell to the same people again and again in your niche, then building a list is essential to your business model.

This allows you to have communication to share information about new products and specials.

Building a list works well for products in specific niches.

For example, the weight loss, health, and parenting niches offer opportunities for you to promote multiple products over a period of time. You’ll find a wide variety of products that fit different needs of your customer base.

When you have a list, you can capture the names and email addresses of potential customers so that when a new product is available, you can share it quickly and easily.

You’ll need a program specifically designed for email marketing – such as Aweber.

Using Aweber, you can create sign up forms that you can add to your blog and squeeze page where people can enter their name and email address.

You can also add special categories to help you get to know your customer better, such as the top weight loss problem or parenting concern they have.

Once you’ve captured emails, you can use the program to send different types of messages.

Broadcast messages are often used to announce specials or just generally communicate with your list. They’re sent one time to the current subscribers.

You can also set up automatic follow up messages that are delivered at a regular time interval with information that goes out to all new subscribers.

A follow up email might give a tip on using a product or good informative news about the niche in general.

Building a list doesn’t happen instantly – it’s another area in affiliate marketing where you will grow over time.

You’ll start with no one on your list and gradually begin to see it increase. The larger your list, the more people you can reach to promote products.

It’s important to treat your list with care and respect so that people will want to hear what you have to share with them.

You’ll want to make sure not to share any of the information you gather or submit your list to constant spam type messages.